I've not become bolder
with age,
but so much more afraid.
I don't miss being young
not really,
I miss having options before me.
We both know what most of
our days
will be between now and the grave
and for some reason we pretend
to ourselves
and to the world that it's okay.

It is not okay. It just isn't.

But there, as the bard would say,
is the rub.
One days have become coulda beens
and the ******* tomorrows are
no longer endless
but corralled into a very small pen.
I don't use a rearview anymore
looking back hurts.
The world's changing again.
How many more times in just
my single lifetime
will we leave people behind?

I'm so sick of playing games.

Games that last a lifetime and that
nobody ever even wins.
Games that count out our lives in
color coded swaths of angry nonsense
like daytime television refugees
until we've bitten our nails all the way
down to the quick
and have nothing but quitting smoking
to hold above the marquee with
any kind of pride
Of course I'll need to explain briefly
to my son what a marquee was
our history is wholesale
but much of it was priced out
of our ability to purchase it.
Old tv shows streaming
on services like new content is
judged against modern values
because finally time failed
to matter and only content may rule.
I rant in hope of caesura breaking
into my random line
with finality and meaning.

There is no depth. This was not a discussion.

You fall backwards and
slide into the earth unbidden.
The contours shaped to a tee
around your every line and curve.
You fade and slip without remorse
or resistance to be found or given.
You may wonder why
I smile as you snarl and venom.
You've spent years throwing
dirt on my name
to match the petty and
filthy needs you crave.
Go ahead, dear.
I've spent this time
digging you a perfect grave.
You made poor calls
and I've made mistakes.
We've been together when
we ought to have hit the brakes.
You've considered me nothing
more than target or fodder
but this isn't a fight, love.
This is a ******* slaughter.

In youth I followed bitterness
and poverty down the
95 corridor and finally found
perfect gasoline rainbows and
humid sudden summer storms.
I found your wide, wonderful smile
and freckles and love and
so, so much more.
I know you fell long ago
and have built up around
your landing spot a lifetime
of interconnected infrastructure
and much of it has lost the
sentimental spark it had
when, so many years ago,
you first erected it. I know.
Maybe now, so far down this
road you met me on,
the feeling is more distant
inside you than once it was.
Changed. Mutated. More
a memory of great passion
more than a physiological pull.
There is comfort in my doings
and stability in my works.
Fond familiarity in my features
and that is enough for me.
All you need do is love me
in the echo left behind
from your fall.
I can live as ghosts do,
on half recalled longings
and in the phrases and inside jokes
in the little smiles you give me
like when rereading a favorite
book or laughing at a scene
from a movie you're fond of
in spite of repeat viewings.
I don't require any more.
Stretch your wings into the flames
of the pit, my love.
You've landed, long ago
and set about your calling.
I'm still lost in you, as ever
and I'm still falling.

I've been nearly forty years
spent just picking at this sore
and if bleeding me is winning
I wish I'd been keeping better score.
I don't know how to stop
it hurts worse than it did before
And if I don't start walking out
I'll just be crawling back for more
I wish I had something to sing
an answer or solution or a cure
but all I got are worries mounting
beating anxiety over what's in store.
White coats and medication
can't seem to fix what I tore.
Deep woods remedies and meditation
not even workouts for your core
Mystics and religion give scripture
and then walk you out the door.
Should you want to find me,
though I can't imagine what for,
Follow the trail of blood I'm leaving
'cause I'm too weak now to roar.
Trying to see a light ahead to follow
but can't stop staring at the floor.
I thought love could save me
if I wasn't such a ******* chore.
Don't ask me, after my years of looking,
for answers, love. I'm still not sure.

I'm so full of nervous energy
but I haven't got air to shout.
I'm scratching at understanding
with no clue what it's all about.
I'm six hours of sleep away from
another triple shift and I've slid
from past to present on the
slideshow of stupid **** I did.
The one that plays in my head
when all I want is anything else instead
the voice that tells me
better off dead
than loosed and unhappy
mean and angry and underfed
I'm so tired of talking to myself
about myself, I know you didn't ask
apologies sent but unrecieved
Still, I'm not undertaking the task
I complain out loud
to an audiance of me about how
I still don't got **** figured out.
I've heard so many answers
but none of 'em make any sense.
If I learn to love myself how
does that repair the fence
That I put up to keep all of them away
so I don't have to deal with
what all of 'em have got to say
I think we've learned talking doesn't work
and if I can't get a few hours sleep
I'll be another day running empty
How do I make me feel better?
What's the cheat code or the trick
to getting over all this *******
I've reached the breakdown
where it all falls apart
and I'm lost again
still not knowing where to start.

I can't seem to stop
thinking about the end,
about the final moments
the life I've worked so
hard to finally sorta
start to figure out
is over, finished
I've spent most of my life
selling my time to other
people and being largely
cheated on the deal
and I'm at the point
where the sand is
no longer in greater
amounts on the top
of the hour glass than below
and in the distance I can
just make out the rounded
edges that will mark
the empty place where dry
bones will soon lay at rest
and I worry what you'll get.
Will my legacy be something
you can hold high?
Will you reach into your memories
of me in times of difficulty
to use words spoken to you
in my atonal version of
warmth to help you get through?
Or will you just feel left behind?
Everyone leaves, given enough
tide or enough time.
Everybody goes foward toward
a reward of some kind
and they fade in the middle
distance as you sit behind.
It happened to me, too.
So, should you feel abandoned
when I'm no longer around
I'm sorry, buddy. I really
didn't want to go,
so long, goodbye.
I really hope you can
forgive me, but it's up
to you to do or say.
Tomorrow belongs to you
I still belong to yesterday.

Here's to absent friends
and present worries.
For clear skies of blue
or storms and their furies.
To our now idle hands
and our unfulfilled dreams.
For the cough drop weekends
and the week full of screams.
To you and I and the we
that we've now become.
And to the many varied pasts
we stole each other from.
Because everything changes
that has once begun
and because after every rising
there's a setting sun.
I do not wish to know the wonder
and terror of whatever comes next.
I'm a terrible student
and life's a hell of a test.
And finally here's to you
my very big, little one
I'm a boy become father
because you are my son.
I hope you'll find peace and love
and all that you deserve and need
just please do your best, son,
but just don't follow my lead.